My older sister once waxed nostalgically about how when I was three or four years old my mother spent a year alone at home with me “and she knew all the songs from your cartoons and you would sing them together.” I don’t recall any such happy time, but a flashback last year did take me to this period. We were in the living room, I was naked and my mother kept poking at me with her finger–sticking it inside my butt, tickling me, rubbing my genitals, and she was laughing. Then suddenly there was a knock at the front door. She looked alarmed, wiped off her hands and meekly said ‘who is it?’ and put up a facade of normalcy to the saleswoman at the door. While she said no, I came around the corner and she saw me; my mother laughed it off and said she was just about to give me a bath, but when were alone again she beat me with a hairbrush for letting myself be seen in that state. I didn’t know she was committing a crime that needed to be covered up, but she did.

This was no isolated incident, I can remember many times when my mother played these perverse little games when I was in that age range, shoving the handle of a hairbrush or countless other things into my anus, rubbing my naked body over her as she reclined, putting my penis in her mouth… The body of a child is not meant to be the object of perversion, to be used, intruded upon, and roughly handled. I’m seeing an acupuncturist weekly now to aid in my healing work, and it is really eye-opening every time as I become more aware of my body and it’s energies and issues, how interconnected and tangled it is from the severe trauma I went through. Instead of dissociating from my body and thinking something is ok because of whatever old emotional pattern I’m acting out, I can feel and understand my body more, and how much damage was done by this abuse.

My mother’s sexual abuse almost always ended with “spanking,” as this seemed to be an integral part of her perverse ritualized scenes, whether she was “angry” at me for something or not. To think that spanking a child causes no trauma or damage is an example of dissociation–dissociating from the reality of our bodies and our rights. The entire act is perverse, as the buttocks are an erogenous zone–a private, sexual part of the child’s body that should not be touched by anyone. Striking the buttocks sends rushes of blood to the genitals, causing sexual stimulation in the process. The buttocks also contain nerves, blood vessels, pressure points, the roots of the spine and are a part of the whole human body that can be profoundly damaged by the trauma that ‘spanking’ entails. When young children are “spanked,” lesions form in the brain, doing harm that will be very difficult to fix in later life when this trauma can turn into mental and physical illnesses.

Spanking also encourages numbness, splitting off from ones own body. The child is told that against his consent someone is going to come and have some use for a part of his body; they will do whatever they want with it, regardless of the discomfort, pain, and humiliation it causes him, until they feel satisfied. That is the same situation as sexual abuse, and being done on an erogenous zone, often involving forced nudity, it’s insane that people are so disconnected that they don’t realize what it is. For the victim of such an act, dissociation is the natural result, leaving the body and especially that part of the body (which can for some be a more or less permanent process.) I realize that as a result of being abused, I dissociated from my body as a rule, and I never truly came to realize that my body and every single part of it belongs to me. It wasn’t anyone’s right to touch me without my consent, and it’s really sad that we don’t live in a world where children’s rights and bodies are respected.

Something I’m really trying to remember at all times is that abusers don’t magically change for no reason. My mother, father, brother…haven’t owned up to their crimes and committed to forty years of therapy. They’ve done nothing, so why would they change? My mother should not have access to baby boys, as she has with both of my nephews. When I was fourteen years old (thus before she completely stopped sexually abusing me) she was left alone with my sister’s infant son. There wasn’t anything to stop her. No nanny cams, no awareness from my sister after repressing her own memories of being abused by our mother. I remember the way my parents cooed and showered her son with attention when he was around, attention that was driven by their own sick intentions. I think it’s pretty much 100% that they sexually abused him in some way.

And I realize that an assumption I’ve had that either of my ex-siblings would just unknowingly let her do these things may be naive. I remember one day my sister was sitting on the couching with her baby and repeatedly hitting his butt through his diaper while chanting “spanky spanky spanky..” I was creeped out, but she just said “What? he doesn’t feel anything…” Of course, she doesn’t know what he could feel, and as I later saw, her convictions not to spank were insincere, and didn’t involve keeping her hands to herself. But this perverse little game of hers was a direct reflection of things that our mother did. And likewise my brother may be actively abusing his own child, not just passively allowing our parents to do it. My older brother and his childhood friend performed so many perverse acts on me that were taught to them by abusers like our mother. There’s no telling if they still have compulsions to perform these acts on children.

I don’t know for a fact that our mother is left alone with my brother’s son, I only know that she and my father moved across the country, to just down the street from him when he had a baby. But that is quite enough, I know what my parents like to do kids, and what my brother did to me. And of course this type of sexual abuse applied to an infant or toddler is grooming, is a setup to teach him to accept even more violent and intrusive sexual abuse in the future. My mother constantly putting things into my anus gradually stretched it out so that when my father and other adult men raped me, it wouldn’t rupture. Even if my mother didn’t have access to her grandchildren after infancy, others could follow upon her work. She has to be stopped.

Looking at all of this, it’s hard to believe, to wipe all of that brainwashing from me that made me believe that nothing was wrong, nothing bad was happening in my childhood. But people violated my body, and they did it without asking my permission or even giving me a chance to say no, it was just sudden and all I could do was dissociate to get away. Being aware of my body and my surroundings and rightfully taking care of them to the extent that I feel good is an entirely new scenario. Nothing in my childhood told me to do other then ignore, ignore my own body and my own needs as I sat hyper-alert waiting for the next abuse or dissociating in an attempt to escape it all. I can’t believe how much tension and fear have been released from my body with the assistance of my acupuncturist. I’m also not settling for any naiveté regarding my ex-“family,” they’re hopelessly ugly, and that’s the end of their story, but not mine.

15 Responses to The Perversity of Sexual Abuse Vs. A Child’s Body

I’m not going to lie, this was very difficult to read. Your parents are and were very sick people. However, kudos to you for taking great strides to take care of yourself. Your mind and body have been so traumatized that I imagine it will take a while to feel some sort of normalcy. Even though this is a difficult post to digest, it is one that takes a lot of bravery to talk about but I’m glad that you are. So many people don’t understand what these sick people do to groom their victims. My stepfather led me to believe that he had sex with another family member and possibly other children to “stretch” them and make them ready to be sexually active. He used this tactic to get me to comply with him consensually. Hopefully your parents and siblings will be stopped before it’s too late and spare your nieces and nephews.

Thank you Mrs. M. This is very difficult to talk about, I hesitated writing about it on this blog for a long time. But the shame belongs to my mother, so I’m glad to give it back. I’m starting to realize that this healing work I’m doing will definitely take some time–reaching a point of health and then sustaining it permanently is a big task when almost from birth I was treated in this way. It is so sick and despicable that your stepfather claimed he was “getting you ready for sex” by sexually abusing you. Many pedophiles use that, but of course abuse doesn’t easily lead to a healthy adult sex life, but that grooming leads to more non-consensual sexual abuse often.

In no way have my husband, kids or myself ever been sexually abused. I even go as far as to tell my children to not even talk to another child, teenager or adult who might “creep them out” because I am well aware that those who prey on children don’t go straight to a child’s crotch.

I personally couldn’t relate to all of the sexual abuse in this article, but the spanking portion stopped me dead in my tracks. As I had mentioned in a previous post on my blog, my sisters and I were spanked a lot! Sometimes with a switch (i.e. a stick from the backyard), once in a great while with a belt, but usually with my dad’s hand. We had also attended a small private Church school that studied Lifepacs and were huge believers in paddling. Unfortunately, I have often excused my parents’ behavior and would say for years that they were just disciplinarians.

My husband rarely spanked our boys, and I might have done it even less, to each one of our boys twice a year. After reading this post yesterday and discussing this with my husband last night, neither one of us will do it again to either of our boys. We have been terribly wrong. I don’t want to humiliate them in any way. We had honestly never thought of the sexual aspect of spanking before. I know that may sound ignorant to you, but we hadn’t. How can I tell my children to not let anyone touch their penis, testicles and bottom if I think it’s okay for my husband and I to spank their buttocks? I began to realize my own extreme hypocrisy. Whether our little guys are gay, bi, or straight, I don’t care, I just want them to have the healthiest view of their bodies and sex as possible. That’s not going to happen if I humiliate them, call them names, and I now know more than ever, spank them.

My cuties said goodbye to daddy before he left for work this morning. I then made them a quick breakfast before taking them to school. I sat with both my little guys at the table, and told them that daddy and I were so sorry for spanking them in the past, and we will not do that anymore. I reminded them that their bottoms were private, and no one should touch them in anyway until they are old enough to make a decision to allow someone to touch them in a private way.

My husband and I left Christianity less than a year and a half ago. Last night I told him “What good is it for us to leave an ancient, oppressive, and barbaric religion that is not even relevant if we carry on any of it’s practices in our new lives?” It’s been tough, Caden. A few nights ago I told Mr. Amazing that I wish there was a way to rid oneself of the yuck that religion leaves behind without having to be apart of another religion’s rituals and cleansing.

Caden, I just want to thank you for this post. I am sorry that you went through what you did. I am grateful that you have allowed yourself to be open like this so that those of us who have been wounded will not make the same mistakes to our own children. Even long before I was a parent, I read an awful lot about discipline, boundaries and choices, I have never read such a convincing article against spanking until I read yours. Now that you gave me the words to know what to look for, I did some more research last night. I could not have known all that I was doing wrong if you didn’t take the risk of being vulnerable in your blog. Thank you!

Charity, that’s great! I honestly thought I would receive hate mail after posting this entry for what I said about spanking. But I’m so glad I could open that door for you and you were able to apologize to your sons and move beyond that sick old custom. That’s something most people never do. My mother was a catholic and used that religion to justify her desire to spank, and also tried to send me to a catholic school where they paddled (and of course indoctrinated) students. But thankfully I only got as far as kindergarten, and so was spared all of that. What your father did to you and your sisters sounded very abusive to me.

I’ve read from many other survivors how spanking groomed them to accept sexual abuse from adults. So I really hope more people can leave behind that cognitive dissonance. Thanks so much for your feedback and honest desire to grow! It’s rare and great to see.

Caden, I don’t have words to say to you except to thank you for having the courage to face this nightmare and to share your story with us so that others may learn from what you went through. It was such a difficult read and hope that you shall eventually be well.

I am so sorry to know you had to go through this… I stumbled across this blog and didn´t even expect to read something like this. I kept thinking all along that abusers tend to be people who have been abused, themselves. Thus abuse is a legacy, from one generation to the next, and if you´ve had the courage to speak about this and seek help, I sincerely commend you for it… for making it a point of being the last one to receive that legacy.

I honestly couldn’t read the whole thing without taking a few minutes to gain my composure. I’m so sorry this has happened to you. Both my husband and I have been victims of sexual abuse. Thank you for sharing your story in hopes of opening up people’s eyes with these issues. I stand strongly on no spanking. Before I read this story I always thought fighting fire with fire would do no good and it’s very true. Thank you and I send good energy and thoughts to you and other victims every day.

I typed in a few words into Google as I’ve been looking for some sort of validation for what I’ve experienced and I landed here. Thank you Caden for allowing us in. Like the other readers here, I commend you too. That post is a powerful read and I intend on reading your other posts too.

There must be so many people having flashbacks and being triggered now by the Weinstein and Spacey stories. I hope you managing OK, Caden. I’m struggling a bit.. maybe more than I care to admit.

I’m with you when you say, “For the victim of such an act, dissociation is the natural result, leaving the body and especially that part of the body (which can for some be a more or less permanent process.)”

I wasn’t sexually abused by my parents, but my father would hit us hard. I remember running up the stairs as fast as I could and going to a corner of my bedroom which was as far away as I could get from him. I’d cower and tense up my body as hard as I could in preparation for what was to come. The sting combined with the fear of being at the receiving end of his anger was terrifying. I don’t know when I first started to disassociate as I had a very traumatic upbringing, but this may well be where it stemmed from. Now thinking about it, when I’d tense up, this was my way of trying to lessen the pain and I’d go somewhere in my mind to take me away from what was happening.

A few years ago, I was groomed into being spanked by someone who I now view as an intellectual narcissist. He groomed me for a year before he was finally able to get me over his knees and spank me to the point where I’d be heavily bruised and wouldn’t be able to sit down comfortably for days. He loved that. I’d wriggle and beg for him to stop but he’d carry on. My hands were tied so I couldn’t escape. As I had a very warped perception of this guy, I didn’t think he was being cruel and abusive, I just thought it was a little odd that he didn’t stop when it was getting too too much. Whilst being spanked, I was getting flashbacks of my father hitting me and I’d be welling up with tears trying to push the memories aside, but obviously I was being triggered. I didn’t realise this at the time. That stinging pain, the helplessness and fear, was the same.

Those experiences are what brought me to your post which has helped me to be a little more forgiving of myself. “And of course this type of sexual abuse applied to an infant or toddler is grooming, is a setup to teach him to accept even more violent and intrusive sexual abuse in the future.”

Thank you Rose, for reading and sharing some of your powerful story. I’m so sorry you were abused by your father and then this other man who harassed you for a whole year to wear down your boundaries. Corporal punishment can setup so many abusive relationship dynamics as an adult, particularly when people are eager to reenact these scenes of abuse from childhood on people who’s needs they aren’t considering any more then the abusive parent cares about the child they are beating. It’s really sad.